by Nick Carter
“They probably put that around her to take her out. Over a negligee, it might have looked like she was wearing an evening gown. The way I’ve figured it so far, they probably took her down on the service elevator, then out through the garage. If she was still dopey from those pills she took, she might have looked like a girl who had had too much to drink, and who was being helped home by a couple of friends.”
The phone rang suddenly, startling us both. “Didn’t you arrange for the switchboard not to put through any calls?” I asked.
“Yes. The manager wasn’t on duty yet, but the assistant manager was very nice about it. He assured me that the Queen wouldn’t be disturbed.”
“Answer it,” I said as the ring came again. “It must be Abdul on the house phone in the lobby. The switchboard can’t control anyone dialing direct from there. Be sure to reprimand him for ringing and risking awakening Sherima.”
Candy picked up the phone, listened briefly, and nodding to me that I had been correct in my guess, proceeded to tell of! Abdul for daring to call the room when he had been instructed just to wait for her and not to bother Sherima. She pulled it off quite well, and I mentally applauded her acting ability in the midst of stress.
Hanging up, she turned and said, “Nick, I’ve got to go. If I don’t, he’ll be up here next. He says he’s still not certain that he should go off into the country when ‘my lady’ doesn’t feel well.”
“All right, Candy,” I agreed, giving her a swift kiss as she slipped a fox jacket over her crisp white blouse. “Just don’t let him suspect anything. Act normal and keep him away as long as possible.”
“I will, Nick,” she promised as I let her out the door. “Just find Sherima.” Another quick kiss, then she was gone. When I had closed the door behind her, I stood for a moment looking down at the lock and the chain, on the door—sturdy steel devices. I wondered how anyone could have gotten into the room without smashing his way through the chain, creating enough noise to arouse everyone on the floor. Obviously the chain hadn’t been in place. It couldn’t have been, for Candy had been in my room during the abduction, and she hadn’t had an opportunity before that to secure it in place. While we were making love, someone had taken advantage of the unchained door to get in and carry off the former Queen I was supposed to be protecting. And in the course of doing that, they had killed a man whose career as a guard had never brought him up against anyone more dangerous than an over-zealous autograph hunter or a bungling petty thief. Disgusted with myself, I slipped the Do Not Disturb sign over the outside knob on the door to Sherima’s suite, then went back to my own room. The phone was ringing as I opened the door, and I ran to answer it. Hawk began talking as soon as he recognized my voice:
“The men will deliver your movie projector and other things in about an hour. The security man they killed was a bachelor and has no family in the District, according to his personnel record. That’s a break, at least; no one will be expecting him home this morning. The hotel manager will be informing Watergate’s security chief that he has Hogan—that’s the man’s name—on special assignment, and that he’s to be removed from the duty roster for a couple of days. That’s all I have for you right— wait a minute . . .”
I had heard the buzzer signaling that a call was coming in on another of Hawk’s many desk phones, and I could hear him talking to someone on the other end, but couldn’t make out his words. Then he was back on my line.
“That was Communications,” he said. “Our monitors report that a signal was transmitted, obviously in code, to a station in Adabi less than ten minutes ago. The sender wasn’t on the air long enough for us to get a fix on it here. The message was short, repeated three times. Decoding is working on it now—if they come up with anything, I’ll get right back to you.”
“Do we have a car covering Sherima’s limousine?” I asked. That was part of the plan Hawk and I had worked out earlier. We didn’t want anyone grabbing Candy and Sherima’s bodyguard, too. I purposely had neglected to mention that possibility to Candy, not wanting to suggest to her that she might have anything to worry about personally.
“Yes. Just a minute, and I’ll check on their whereabouts.”
Once more I could hear Hawk in conversation with what. I assumed was the radio room from which local operations were directed, then he was speaking to me again:
“Right now, the chauffeur and the girl are in Georgetown, getting ready to swing down onto Canal Road; about the same route you took the other day.”
“Good. I guess she managed to convince him that it was their job to find Sherima a house as quickly as possible. Now, if she can just keep him occupied most of the day, we’ll have a little breathing time before the word gets to the embassy.”
“Let’s hope so,” Hawk agreed, then added, “I’ll be in touch as soon as I get anything else for you, N3.”
When he hung up, I went into the bathroom and checked out the dead Arab there. The corpse had stiffened in the tub, fortunately in a cramped position that would make him more easily stuffed into the makeshift coffin that soon would be delivered to my room. I was glad of that; I had no desire to start breaking arms or legs on a dead man.
Chapter 9
It was noon before I heard from Hawk again. By that time, the corpses had been taken away from both my room and Sherima’s suite. The latter job hadn’t been so easy. The maids were working the floor by the time Hawk’s men arrived. There wasn’t any trouble getting the Arab into one of their equipment boxes in my room, but it took a bit of doing to distract the maid in my wing while they went into the suite next door and removed the grisly bundle from the bathroom there. To accomplish it, I had to go down the hall to the room where the maid was working and keep her occupied with inane questions while they carried out their job.
By the time the maid got through explaining to me that she was too busy to sew some buttons on my shirts and to personally handle some laundry for me—the housekeeping department and valet service would be happy to take care of any tasks like that, she insisted repeatedly while I pretended not to understand just what she meant —she must have thought I was a complete idiot. In the end, though, I was almost able to talk her into it by flashing a twenty-dollar bill at her. I pretended to give up when I heard coughing from the hallway—a signal that Hawk’s men were finished—and, I headed for the service elevator, putting the twenty back into my pocket. Her look of disappointment was partially wiped off with the five dollars I slipped to her as “consolation,” however, and the free-spending—if simple minded—Texan had won another friend on the Watergate staff.
Hawk’s call didn’t do anything to ease the anguish I was feeling at being stuck in that room, though. Somewhere, I knew, Sherima was prisoner of the Sword or his men, and I was sitting around on my butt not able to do anything about it until AXE’s undercover agents and their informers came up with a lead. And Hawk’s response to my immediate question about that potential lead didn’t help:
“Nothing. Nobody seems to know a thing. And that’s not the worst of it, N3.”
“What now?”
“The State Department has had an inquiry from the Adabian Embassy regarding the safety of Sherima. The ambassador was acting on the direct request of Shah Hassan. Somebody in Adabi—whoever received that radio signal—has passed the word to the Shah that Sherima’s life is in danger here. We still don’t know who transmitted the signal this morning, or who in Sidi Hassan received it. But this is the message that Decoding analyzed from the signal a few minutes before the call from the Adabian Embassy: ‘The Sword is poised to strike.’ ”
“It sounds like she might still be alive,” I interrupted. “Don’t you think it would have said something like, ‘The Sword has struck,’ if she were dead?”
Hawk apparently had reached that same conclusion, too, for he agreed with me, although I think we both admitted to ourselves that we were hoping for the best while fearing the worst. “However,” he went on grimly, “I don’t think we have too much ti
me. The Adabian Embassy, State tells me, already has made inquiries at the Watergate about Sherima’s whereabouts. They were told that she has gone out for the day, as you had the girl arrange with the manager. Finally, the embassy spoke to the manager directly, and he followed through as instructed by informing the First Secretary that he understood Sherima had gone into Maryland to look for a house. That seemed to satisfy them for the moment, but now the pressure is on.”
“How’s that?”
“It seems somebody at the embassy suddenly realized that Abdul Bedawi hasn’t reported in all day, as he apparently has been doing.”
“That strikes me as odd, too,” I admitted. “I wonder he hasn’t called in. He was making a point of it before. Where is the limo now?”
Hawk left the line to check with the radio room, then relayed the report to me: “Your friend is sitting in a real estate office in Potomac at the moment. It’s the second one she’s stopped at so far. The chauffeur is waiting in the car.”
“Something’s not right,” I said. “Normally, he would be using the opportunity to make a phone call so he could report in. Unless . . .”
“Unless what, N3?”
“Unless he already knew what he was going to find out when he contacted the embassy, sir. Can you have our cover car stick close to them from now on? I don’t like this whole setup anymore.” My mind was racing ahead of my words as things started falling in place. “I have the feeling we’re doing exactly as someone else wants us to do.”
“We’re already sticking as close to them as we can without tipping our hand completely. But wait a minute, Nick—Communications tells me that at one point this morning our men in the cover car thought that they had been made for sure. They got cut off from Sherima’s limousine by a patrol car that was escorting a funeral procession. When they were finally able to proceed, the limousine had obviously slowed down, because it only was a couple of blocks ahead of them. It does give the impression that Bedawi might have been waiting for them to catch up.”
Hawk started to say something else, then asked me to hold on when I heard another phone ring in his office. A chill swept over me when I recognized that ring—a double-bell tone. I knew it came from the red phone immediately beside Hawk’s right elbow, and that it was directly linked to the Oval Office in the White House. I had been with Hawk once before when it pealed and his automatic response—”Yes, Mr. President”—had tipped me off to the hot line. He’d never confirmed the identity of the caller to me, and I could tell that he had been annoyed with himself for answering the phone in that manner with anyone in earshot.
I waited for him to come back on the line for what must have been only five minutes but it seemed like hours. I couldn’t hear what he was saying; the red phone had a specially designed mouthpiece that confined the words to the transmitter. I was sure there was a super-scrambler on the line, too.
“N3?” Hawk was back on the phone to me at last.
“Yes, sir.”
“You recognized the ring?” He never missed a thing, although when I had been in his office the day he had answered the President’s call I had tried to pretend I hadn’t heard how he’d answered the red phone. Nonetheless, he apparently remembered the incident.
“Yes, sir,” I admitted.
“The Secretary of State is with the President. He has just been contacted directly by the Adabian ambassador, acting on specific orders from Shah Hassan. The United States Government has been asked to use all its facilities to locate the former Queen Sherima immediately and to put her in direct contact with His Royal Highness. The Secretary had no choice but to say that we would attempt to do so at once.”
“How soon is ‘at once’?” I asked.
“The Secretary bought us a little time, N3, but he put us on the spot at the same time. He told the Adabian ambassador to advise Shah Hassan that Sherima was due to return to his home for dinner this evening, not in Alexandria, but at the town house he keeps in Georgetown. He told the ambassador to assure the Shah that Sherima would be put in touch with him direct from there via the State Department radio network. He has a worldwide transmitter linkup from the town house and from his Alexandria home. The ambassador advised the Secretary while I was talking to him that the Shah would be waiting at his radio, despite the six-hour time difference.”
“How much time do we have?”
“The Secretary said that Sherima was due to arrive for dinner at about eight o’clock. That will be two a.m. in Sidi Hassan. And you can bet the Shah will be up waiting. That means we have about seven and a half hours to get Sherima back to the Watergate, Nick.”
I asked Hawk if he would contact the agents in the car covering Candy and Abdul and ask them for the name of the real estate office in Potomac where the limousine was parked. He said he would have the name for me momentarily, then asked why I wanted it.
“I’m going to get them back here,” I told him. “I’ll call Candy there and tell her that the embassy suspects something has happened to Sherima, so there’s no point in her keeping up the pretense with Abdul. I’ll tell her not to let on I’ve called, but just to tell him it’s time to drive back; she can say she is concerned about Sherima being alone, too, or something like that. I want to see what happens when they return. There’s something about this whole thing that’s not right, but I can’t put my finger on it. Or maybe it’s just that I’m getting fed up with sitting in this hotel room and figure I might stir up some action this way. Is that all right with you, sir?”
“You’re in charge, N3,” Hawk said. “Is there anything more you want from me right now?”
“No, sir. Just tell that cover car to stick close to them, and I want to be kept posted on their whereabouts when they get back to the District.”
“I’ll have the radio room contact you directly every ten minutes, N3,” Hawk said. “I’m going to have to go to the White House. The President wants me there when he and the Secretary of State determine what to do if Sherima isn’t found in time to talk to Hassan.”
I wanted to tell him I would do my best to make certain the possibility wouldn’t arise, but I already knew he was aware of that.
Shortly after Hawk hung up, an AXE radioman phoned to relay the name of the real estate agency where Candy was carrying out her part of the charade. I got the number from information and phoned, surprising the woman who answered by asking for Miss Knight. When Candy got on the line and discovered I was calling her, she appeared even more astonished.
“Nick, how did you know where to find me?”
“No time to explain now, beautiful. I’ll tell you all about it later. There’s been a new development and I want you to get back here as quickly as possible.”
“What’s happened? Is it Sherima? Have you found her? Is she—”
I interrupted, saying, “No, it’s not Sherima and we haven’t found her. But we’ve had word that Shah Hassan has been trying to contact her. Somehow, we believe, he’s been tipped off that she’s gone. Now, don’t let on to Abdul that you know anything. Just say you’ve decided to head back; you’re concerned for Sherima, for one thing, and that the agents you’ve visited already seem to have enough houses available for Sherima to look at without going any further.”
“Should I have him hurry back, Nick? If I do that, he might think that something is wrong.”
Her reasoning made sense, so I suggested that she not have him drive directly back to the city, but to follow through on our original plan of stopping at a couple of stores, ostensibly to handle some errands for Sherima. “But don’t take too long,” I warned, “and keep Abdul from reporting in to the embassy if you can. Bring him up to the suite when you get back to the Watergate.”
“Is that where you are now, Nick?”
“Yes, Candy. I’ll be waiting here for your return.”
Candy was silent for a moment, then asked slowly, “Nick, do you think Abdul might be involved in Sherima’s disappearance? Is that why you want him back there?”
“R
ight now, I don’t know what to think. But I’d rather have him where I can keep an eye on him. Just try to get back here within a couple of hours if you can do it without being too obvious about it.”
“All right, Nick. See you soon.”
Five minutes after I put down the phone and flopped on the bed to wait, the AXE radio operator phoned to report that Candy had left the real estate office in Potomac, and that the limousine had started back toward Washington.
“Keep me posted on every move they make,” I instructed before hanging up.
Ten minutes later, the phone rang again. I was informed that the cover car was proceeding south on Route 190—River Road—about five hundred yards behind Sherima’s limousine and nearing the intersection with Cabin John Parkway. That meant Abdul was taking a more direct route into the District than he and Candy had used to reach the horse country of Maryland. He’d obviously done some more map reading since our earlier expedition up that way.
“Instruct the cover car to keep them in sight at all times,” I told the radioman. “I don’t care if they have to stick right on their rear bumper, I don’t want to lose that car.”
“Yes, sir,” he responded, and even before he hung up, I could hear him beginning to pass on my orders over the powerful AXE transmitter.
The rapidity with which his next report came surprised me. And his report wasn’t the least bit encouraging.
“Subject car has stopped at a service station near the intersection of River Road and Seven Locks Road.” I fumbled for my map as he continued routinely, “C car reports that the chauffeur has gone into the gas station while the attendant is fueling limousine. C car has halted just out of sight of the station and one agent is going forward on foot to keep up surveillance . . . Shall I stay on the line for his report, sir?”
“Affirmative,” I told him, then waited perhaps ten minutes before I heard the radio crackling in the background with the report. The radioman returned to the phone with words that confirmed one of my worst fears: Candy hadn’t been able to prevent Abdul from reaching a phone: